Page 14 - The Thief's Journal

The Thief's Journal
Although it was he who had made the first advance, I knew, as I answered, the almost desperate nature of the gesture the invert dares when he approaches a young man. To mask my confusion, I had the pretext of being breathless, I had the bustle of the moment. He said, “You did pretty well for yourself.”
I knew that this praise was cleverly calculated, but how handsome Stilitano was amidst the beggars (I didn't know his name yet)! One of his arms, at the extremity of which was an enormous bandage, was folded on his chest as if in a sling, but I knew that the hand was missing. Stilitano was an habitue of neither the cafe nor even the calle.
“What'll the cape cost me?”
“You're going to pay me for it?”
“Why not?”
“With what?”
“Are you scared?”
“Where are you from?”
“Serbia. I'm back from the Foreign Legion. I'm a deserter.”
I was relieved. Destroyed. The emotion created within me a void which was at once filled by the memory of a nuptial scene. At a ball where soldiers were dancing among themselves, I watched their waltz. It seemed to me at the time that the invisibility of two legionnaires became total. They were charmed away by emotion. Though their dance was chaste at the beginning of “Ramona", would it remain so when they wedded by exchanging before our eyes a smile, as lovers exchange rings? To all the injunctions of an invisible clergy the Legion answered, “I do”. Each one of them was the couple, wearing both a net veil and a dress uniform (white leather, scarlet and green shoulderbraid). They haltingly exchanged their manly tenderness and wifely modesty. To maintain the emotion at a high pitch, they slowed up and slackened their dance, while their pricks, numbed by the fatigue of a long march, behind a barricade of rough denim recklessly threatened and challenged each other. The patent−leather vizors of their kepis kept striking together. I knew that I was being mastered by Stilitano. I wanted to play sly:
“That doesn't prove that you can pay.” “Trust me.”
Such a hard−looking face, such a strapping body were asking me to trust them. Salvador was watching us. He was aware of our understanding and that we had already decided upon his ruin, his loneliness. Fierce and pure, I was the theatre of a fairyland restored to life. When the waltz ended, the two soldiers disengaged themselves. And each of these two halves of a solemn and dizzy block hesitated, and, happy to be escaping from invisibility, went off, downcast, toward some girl for the next waltz.
“I'll give you two days to pay me,” I said. “I need dough. I was in the Legion too. And I deserted. Like you.” “You'll get it.”
I handed him the cape. He took it with his only hand and gave it back to me. He smiled, though imperiously, and said, “Roll it up.” And joshingly added, “While waiting to roll me one.”
The Thief's Journal 12